Facebook’s Study app wants to pay you for your data. But experts say the company still has trust issues

A new “Study” app by the tech giant will look at which apps users are interested in, where they’re used and how long you spend on them. Facebook says they won’t collect user IDs, passwords or messages and the information won’t be sold to a third party.

However, former three-term Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, in an interview with the Star, says Facebook faces trust issues with the public, and a third party auditor should be used to make sure the company is in compliance.

“Given their past history, it doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in what they’re saying,” says Cavoukian, executive director of Toronto-based Global Privacy and Security by Design. “The last time they said they were protecting your information they ended up selling it to a third party.”

Federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien is suing Facebook over allegedly breaching Canadian privacy laws. A report by the federal and B.C. commissioners found that in a year-long investigation into the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, 87 million users had unknowingly had their personal information harvested.

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The investigation found that not only had Facebook broken Canadian privacy laws, but that it had consistently refused to accept recommendations to rectify the problem.

Facebook says the new Study app is for “business and product research” and that the information will be used to “learn which apps people value and how they’re used.” The data will likely be used in different ways, including possibly targeting where the audience is for Facebook advertising. Earlier incarnations of Facebook study apps had participants sending in screenshots of Amazon purchases. The company has also used research apps in the past to track potential acquisition targets.

Facebook and Google take up more than 70 per cent of the digital advertising market using sophisticated analytics to track their audience. A study released this week by the News Media Alliance, which represents U.S.-based newspapers, estimates that Google made $4.7 billion (U.S.) in 2018 alone, almost as much as the entire American news industry.

However, the online platforms have come under greater scrutiny by legislators over privacy issues for their methods, even as legacy publishers struggle to compete in the marketplace.

Problematically, the new app released by Facebook comes after it was discovered in January that the platform was running a similar program called Facebook Research that ended up being pulled by Apple.

The app was similar to another Facebook-owned app called Onavo, where the company used data to gather information about users. That app was pulled in 2018 because Apple said it violated privacy laws after an investigation by online digital magazine TechCrunch. The Study app is available in the Google Play Store, but not the Apple App Store.

“Their previous use of data was not fair, not transparent or accountable,” Cavoukian says of Facebook.

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But the newly released Study app is also problematic. Some experts worry users may not know exactly what they are signing up for.

“Facebook is asking for permission to see app activities from other apps that a user may have installed on their phone, and not just the Facebook app,” says Philip Mai, Director Business and Communications of the Ryerson Social Media Lab at the Ted Rogers School of Management. “Access to this kind of information can contain important signals about things that a user might want to remain private or keep secret.”

However, Mai acknowledges the new app is at least more transparent than what the company had previously offered.

“I am glad to see they are offering more transparency, compensating all participants and promising not to reshare the data,” says Mai.

“Privacy is about personal control of your information and there’s nothing wrong with getting value for it,” says Cavoukian. “Despite my thoughts on compliance, Facebook is at least agreeing to compensate you in this case instead of simply harvesting it and selling it.”

Facebook did not outline what the exact remuneration would be for participating.

“All participants are compensated. Our current plan is to offer the same compensation to each participant but we may make adjustments as we continue to evaluate the program,” a spokesperson told the Star. The company’s earlier app targeting teens paid $20 gift cards, according to media reports. With Facebook Study, participants have to be 18 or older.

Facebook spokesperson David Troya-Alvarez said the company is rolling out the new app in India and the United States first.

“Depending on the type of research, we may expand the app to other countries,” said Troya-Alvarez.

“Approaching market research in a responsible way is really important,” said Facebook in a blog post. “Transparency and handling people’s information responsibly have guided how we’ve built Study from Facebook. We plan to take this same approach going forward with other market research projects that help us understand how people use different products and services.”

The Facebook brand has taken a pummeling in Canada from legislators lately.

Last month, the Canadian government issued a “standing summons” to Facebook executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg when they ignored a subpoena from the House of Commons ethics committee to testify about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Zuckerberg seems to have gotten the message. He announced at an annual developer’s conference that “The future is private,” to laughter from the crowd. Zuckerberg quickly acknowledged the skeptism: “I get that a lot of people aren’t sure we are serious about this.”